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"...like an episode. Of our
lives, I mean." The only funny
joke in this season of the Simpsons.
Seriously.
Frank is named for Francesca, the sinner
that Dante and Virgil meet in the Circle
of the Lustful, which is the second Circle
of Incontinence--which of course Snowball
and Al haven't reached yet. We throw
stuff like that in so we can pretend
to ourselves this thing is still based
in fourteenth-century literature.
Incidentally, in Inferno Dante
and Virgil don't help anyone in their
journey, since everyone they meet is
already damned to Hell and is therefore
pretty much beyond that kind of thing--particularly
the weak-ass kind of help that a dead
poet and a somewhat-less-dead poet would
be able to offer. (A cheerful limerick
would be about the extent of it.) However,
we felt that having Snowball and Al wander
around composing pithy limericks about
things wouldn't really appeal to the
twenty-first-century reader, so we're
borrowing (stealing) the travelling-stranger-meets-new-guest-star-helps-him-in-an-ironic-way-and-moves-on
structure from such fine, fine dramatic
television series as Quantum Leap
and Knight Rider and, well, pretty
much every other hour-long dramatic TV
series there's ever been. Which means
more references!
And now that we've drawn the Quantum
Leap parallel, the second reference
behind Al's name should be clear. See,
just like an episode of Buffy The
Vampire Slayer, eventually everything
comes together! Feel our danger, Joss
Whedon.
"Watch this--HEY FRANK!"
is from The Beginning Of The End,
the episode of MST3K populated by giant
grasshoppers who eat the world. One of
the episodes populated by them, anyway.
Tom Servo (which, in case you live under
a rock or in Canada, is who the gumball-machine
robot is) makes fun of a deaf-mute character
in the movie, who is conveniently enough
named Frank.
Expository musical numbers aren't so
much a reference as a cliche, but the
Hell with it.
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